2014 Australian Grand Prix

Williams came away from the Australian Grand Prix with ten points. That’s twice what they scored during the whole of 2013.

Yet they had cause to be disappointed with their result. The FW36 was clearly one of the fastest cars on the track, but misfortune ended Felipe Massa’s race at the first corner.

Valtteri Bottas produced some excellent overtaking moves as he made his way forward from 15th on the grid – but he also made a costly mistake.

On lap ten he banged his car against a wall, damaging his wheel and puncturing his tyre, forcing a pit stop. Fortunately for him he the Safety Car was deployed, minimising the loss, and he was able to fight back.

Bottas was shaping up to make a move on Fernando Alonso when he hit the wall. Given his pace it seems likely he would have been able to pass the Ferrari, and at this stage he already had Jenson Button behind him.

Bottas would have been in a fight with Ricciardo and Kevin Magnussen for a top-three finish. Given the pace he showed when he was in free air – he set the second-fastest lap – there’s a good chance he would have been able to pass them for second. But Nico Rosberg was probably always going to be out of reach.

The lap chart and race chart below give more insight into how the race unfolded for each driver.

Australian Grand Prix lap chart

The positions of each driver on every lap. Use the control below to show/hide different drivers:

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/charts/2014drivercolours.csv

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Lewis Hamilton

1

4

Daniel Ricciardo

2

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Nico Rosberg

3

1

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Kevin Magnussen

4

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Fernando Alonso

5

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7

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Jean-Eric Vergne

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Nico Hulkenberg

7

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Daniil Kvyat

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Felipe Massa

9

Jenson Button

10

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10

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Kimi Raikkonen

11

8

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5

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Sebastian Vettel

12

15

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Adrian Sutil

13

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Kamui Kobayashi

14

Valtteri Bottas

15

10

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16

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Sergio Perez

16

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Max Chilton

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Jules Bianchi

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Marcus Ericsson

19

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Romain Grosjean

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Pastor Maldonado

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Esteban Gutierrez

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Australian Grand Prix race chart

The gaps between each driver on every lap. Use the control below to show/hide different drivers.

no it shows how the fuel regulations stop drivers from driving fast, once they have estabalished a gap from then on its just gap management ( the person behing uses much fuel trying get past). fuel limits where they are are stupid and stop racing if Bernie if you really to stop racing why not just sell your shares and sail on… oh wait….

Interesting pace differences between Alonso and Raikkonen and Hulkenberg and Perez, I guess that would suggest the slower drivers were carrying issues. Perez was completely anonymous during the race, I dont think I saw him at all after the first lap.

Thanks for the charts @keithcollantine
I have been really keen to see how the two Lotus drivers compare. I was expecting them to be a bit closer, really. Grosjean was averaging a second per lap quicker than Maldonado, and nothing Maldonado said after the race made it sound like he was having issues before his retirement.
Anyone know anything different or was that gap genuine?

I think we’ll see all the renault teams gain half a second or so from sorting their drivability issues during the flyaways, maybe the ferrari teams the same to a lesser extent this will probably push the redbulls and ferraris upto williams performance and bring the sauber and lotus closer to the rest of the midfield with the lotus having a bigger jump (seeing as it currently appears fairly unfriendly)